PRmoment Health Communications Review: Can Big Data help personalise healthcare, what about data safety?

 17th November 2022    Health Comms Review 
 Paarul Chand

PRmoment's weekly 'Healthcare Communications Review' column looks at the biggest healthcare trends every week and analyses the communications implications. In partnership with SPAG, A Finn Partners Company.

Earlier this year as a birthday gift, I got my genetic testing done which would also tell me what is my health risk for major diseases like cancer and also what medications are best suited for me across clusters of medicines.

I received a 'largeish' report with nicely presented graphics and analysis. It was scarily accurate in terms of health challenges as well as behavioural traits.

Imagine if such a level of data was the norm at the fingertips of your general physician (A GP is a lost concept in India now, unfortunately), your healthcare could be better personalised, targeted and based on useful insights.

The data can be available to ensure better decisions by clinicians and medical researchers across the following areas:

1) Bridging the silos in healthcare to bring personalised healthcare. This is especially true for people with complex diseases to ensure that medications don't interact negatively.

2) Planning health insurance claims.

3) Digitisation of healthcare records, especially tests and medical history.

According to experts, the healthcare sector in India has lagged in using both big data as well as in digitising the healthcare system.

But Covid has pushed digitisation and the use of data in healthcare in India as it has in most sectors.

What does this mean for communicators?

1) Presentation and ease of gaining key insights from the big data is key to the data's usefulness. Communicators play an important role here as well in simplifying insights for the public at large to affect trust in data.

2) There is currently no universally accepted agreement on what health data of citizens can be shared across borders. Covid has meant large amounts of personal health records are being shared at immigration points. Public affairs have a role to play here in bringing together key stakeholders to discuss this complex issue.

3) Medical CRM platforms are now coming up in India as well. Communicators can help educate patients and doctors both on how that works so that even the neighbourhood one-room doctor can have access to digitization.

In Other News

1) The Good Food Institute India and Deloitte stated in a report that the smart protein (protein derived from alternate, vegan sources) potential could touch 4.2 billion dollars for India by 2030.

Hat Tip to 

The Government of Tamil Nadu and Google are working to add people in the state to the Popular Health Registry. Health workers will then screen people registered here with a Unique Health ID (UHID) for at least 14 conditions including diabetes.

'The Ken' has an interesting analysis of the pros and cons of this. Check it out.

That's it for this week. Special thanks to SPAG, a FINN Partner company for their ongoing support for this weekly column.

News for the column curated by Impact Research and Measurement